Parents' Guide to Marvel Strike Force

As good as comic book characters are alone, there's nothing quite as exciting as when they all come together and duke it out in a massive super-powered crossover melee. Marvel Strike Force captures that feeling as players recruit and choose their favorite characters, mixing and matching powers and abilities to come up with effective combinations. The battles look amazing, too, with sharp details and fluid animations that bring the comic book action to life. Whether it's Captain America throwing his mighty shield or Jessica Jones introducing her knee to some poor thug's groin, each character feels distinct and unique.

You'll unlock lots of different modes as you level up in Marvel Strike Force, many of which come with their own energy resource that you'll use to play. That's good for making sure you've got something to do, even if the gameplay rarely changes. While there might be restrictions or special goals, it always boils down to pitting your five best characters against whatever the game throws at you. One big downside to the game is that if you want to make any real progress, you're either going to have to spend a fair bit of money on special offers or resources, or you're going to have to do a LOT of replaying the same stages over and over. Even when you do spend money, there's still no way to avoid the repetition. It just makes things slightly more streamlined. While that might keep you from getting ahold of some of your favorite characters for a while, it never takes away from the overall excitement of battle. But just like most comic book crossovers, expect to deal with a bit of build up before the truly epic battles begin.